


there's something that i'm missing

by sullypants



Series: the after-party [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: After Party, Alternate Universe, F/M, Prom, an AU in which they never dated, the Lodge Lodge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23619937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sullypants/pseuds/sullypants
Summary: As if actually attending prom weren’t cliche enough, Jughead finds himself somewhat shocked to be participating in that particularly bacchanalian rite that is an actual, honest-to-god, high school-trademark prom after-party. He feels out of character in his own story.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Series: the after-party [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1701841
Comments: 46
Kudos: 102
Collections: 7th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	there's something that i'm missing

As if actually attending prom weren’t cliche enough, Jughead finds himself somewhat shocked to be participating in that particularly bacchanalian rite that is an actual, honest-to-god, high school-trademark prom after-party. He feels out of character in his own story.

He’d skipped it junior year (he’d passed on the actual prom then, too, for that matter), but a thought had wiggled into the back of his brain, sometime during April, that he ought to make an appearance this year. 

Senior year had been a cycle of firsts and slightly—if not outright—uncomfortable moments for Jughead, by concerted effort. 

He’d finished his junior year realizing he’d soon be free of Riverdale and its small-town foibles—and that therefore, he’d also be free of the never-ending cycle of watching his best friends dance around one another in a will-they-won’t-they scenario to rival something like, he didn’t know, like... _Moonlighting_? 

( _Is it weird for an eighteen year old to make a_ Moonlighting _reference_ , he wonders, as he wanders his way through the crowded kitchen of the Lodge Lodge.)

Senior year had been the year Jughead had finally consented to a date with Ethel. 

To one date, at Pop’s, where he’d had his regular order, and they’d talked about schoolwork, and then by mutual, unspoken consent, they’d never spoken of it again. 

It was also the year he’d finally agreed to Betty’s request that he make it official and join the masthead of the Blue & Gold, after three years of what he called _freelancing_ —even if he’d always attended more editorial meetings than he hadn’t.

(Mrs. Burble had made him a decent argument, citing college applications and the need for more concrete evidence of “participation.”) 

The kitchen island is littered with red solo cups, and there must be at least thirty people squeezed into a space Jughead’s ninety-percent positive no one but staff has ever actually cooked in. There’s a haze of smoke that hovers over his classmates, softening the glow cast by the pendant lights hanging above the island.

The mass of formally-attired bodies raises the temperature in the kitchen to a stuffy kind of heat, but through it he can see the reflection of light off the pool outside, cool blue chlorine rays bouncing off the concrete of the deck and illuminating the dark wood exterior of the house (Jughead’s been to Veronica’s _actual_ house, and he’d argue that the Lodge family’s mountain retreat had more house-sized proportions when compared to that monstrosity.) He can hear, but not see, the soft sounds of party-goers in the pool.

The door to the back patio is wide open, and he swings around Chuck Clayton (firmly entwined with Nancy Woods; Jughead doesn’t look closely, so he can’t really tell where she ends and he begins), and escapes outside.

The pool isn’t as crowded as he’d expected it to be. There’s a cluster of people around the hot tub ( _natch_ , he thinks), and in one dark corner of the pool he can see who he thinks might be Reggie and the girl from Seaside High he’d brought as his date, enmeshed so tightly around one another he reckons they could give Nancy and Chuck a run for their money. 

But in the middle of the pool, like a black and white and gold frog, swims Betty Cooper.

A fine fog rises off the heated water, and from inside the house he hears the bass of the stereo, playing what his mind supplies is an Andy Williams tune, one he’s heard emanate from the jukebox at Pop’s. A woman singsongs a lilting melody, and he’s hit hard in the chest when she trills _they don’t love you like I love you_. 

The sound vibrates the concrete beneath his feet, sending the sensation up through the rubber soles of his Chucks. 

(“Trainers with your tux, Torombolo?” Veronica had teased him earlier in the night.) 

Gone now is her silky pink dress, silky like the water itself; the dress he had tried not to stare at. He’d firmly kept his eyes glued to her own when they’d chatted earlier in the night, but he found himself completely enraptured by the bright white of her shoulder blades, the colored gels of the overhead lights bouncing off her as she’d walked away from him towards the punch bowl, to where Veronica awaited her. 

(“We’re going as platonic soulmates this year,” Veronica had told him. 

Jughead has his suspicions about how Veronica feels about Betty, given how typically...voracious Veronica is about almost anyone who’d reached their sexual majority—his prickly self excluded, _thank god_. 

But he also knows their constant, semi-tormented game of musical chairs with his red-headed puppy dog of a best friend felt incongruous the longer it carried on.)

As a kind of self preservation, Jughead doesn’t even let himself dwell on the fact that Betty is almost certainly swimming in what appears to be a strapless bra and a simple pair of underwear. Under the blue of the water her skin looks ghostly white against the black.

He doesn’t doubt her ingenuity and forethought to have potentially stashed a bathing suit ahead of this very party—but her eyes are racooned by her eye makeup, and Jughead doesn’t think she would have failed to remove her makeup had she taken the time to put on a swimsuit. Betty is thorough, he knows (having been subject to her careful editorial eye, having argued with her about punctuation and about gerunds, for nearly four years.) 

So many of their female classmates had gone all-out for prom, a sea of delicately coiffed updos, but Betty had bucked against her own template. She’d skipped the ponytail, let her hair tumble over her shoulders. The ends of that hair now trail through the water, a kind of golden seaweed in the electric blue of the water. The light shifts and Jughead thinks it could almost be neon green. 

She does a slow, gentle breaststroke down the center of the pool. 

When she turns to make the return trip, head bobbing slightly to the music, she spots him. Her eyes brighten and Jughead thinks her smile might rival the glow of the disco ball that had crowned the center of the evening’s dance floor. 

She veers off course, and redirects toward him. Jughead moves closer to the pool. 

She folds her arms on the edge of the pool, digs her chin into her forearm, and smiles as he squats down to meet her.

“I didn’t think you came up! I haven’t seen you.”

He nods down at her.

“I’ve been circulating,” he defends, and she scoffs. Her feet prop against the wall of the pool and she stretches her arms to their full length. The water gently bobs her up and down. 

“You’re being antisocial,” she accuses him, a note of teasing in her voice, and he returns her scoff with a more exaggerated version.

He flattens his palm over his sternum (he’d lost his tie less than thirty minutes into prom and hadn’t seen it since) and feigns indignation.

“I resent that—I actually showed up this year, even if I came stag.”

“I know, I know,” she cocks her head to the side. “But I’m glad you did come. Graduation is almost here.” 

Her tone changes, conveys a kind of sincerity that typically makes him uncomfortable. But in this moment, after the single red cup of watered-down beer from the keg he’d nursed for a full hour (not to mention the single shot Archie had finagled him into throwing back), it settles right between his ribs, a sharp jab of warmth. 

His eyes take in the fine chain of gold resting around her neck, so slight he hadn’t noticed earlier in the night. As he watches, a drop of water races down her neck and merges with its brothers in the dip of her collarbone. 

_You let this good love go to waste_ , the stereo sings, as Betty reaches her hand up and grasps his bicep. For a beat, Jughead feels frozen in place as she smiles up at him. 

The spot where her wet hand encircles his arm seems to burn through his several layers of formalwear, and then—

His balance is thrown as she yanks him forward, and he tumbles headfirst into the water.

He surfaces to the sound of her laughter, and shakes his head like a dog. Betty ducks and splashes him back, water meeting water in the air.

He treads in place, his water-logged tux feeling somehow both too-heavy and weightless. 

Betty ducks her grin beneath the water line, but he can see laughter still in her eyes. He meets her smile with one of his own and rolls his eyes. 

“I _am_ happy you came, you know.” She swims a circle around him, comes to a stop where she started. Jughead thinks she seems a little closer than before—but he also thinks he’s kidding himself—until Betty closes the space between them and wraps her arms around his neck.

He nearly forgets to breathe. His arms float in the water until his body acts of its own accord ( _it can do this but he needs to remind it to breathe?_ he muses) and his hands find the curve of her waist. Her skin feels cool in the water, goose-fleshed even though the water is warm. 

Betty presses a kiss to his temple, and then he feels her smile when she presses her lips to his ear and sighs, “I’m really, really glad you’re here.”

**Author's Note:**

> Born of an anonymous tumblr prompt; thanks anon.
> 
> Title from Beyoncé's Hold Up.


End file.
